Do it yourself floor heating.

We have cold winters and ceramic tiles gets really cold in winters. We heard and read about floor warming products. As we had concrete slab underneath laying water pipes was hard. We selected electrical heating pads. We took this adventure on our own. It was worth it. In winter when outside is 20 deg F the floor is 82 deg F. You love standing on it barefoot. Kids bring their books and just sit on this warm floor and do the homework. We share our installation experience below.

Installing radiant heating under ceramic tiles.

Installing tiles over floor heating mat

Installing tiles over radiant floor heating mat  (homegardenblog)

You have to be very careful while laying tiles. Do not damage the electric wire (blue in our case). We tried to keep the area clean. We have to keep reminding the tile laying crew.

Heated Floors: Do not damage the mat

Make sure not to damage the blue wire. We hooked up an multimeter across the two wires. We monitored the resistance all the time. We kept our fingers crossed till the last tile was placed. If we broke the wire it will show very high or infinite reading. It will be zero if we shorted the two wires. Tile laying contractor had to be told repeatedly not to damage wire. In the end it worked out to be well. He was excited too as he has never seen it before.

Heated floor temperature control--Suntouch Programmable Floor Stat Model 50600-120R

Suntouch Programmable Floor Stat Model 50600-120R.


Works very well. No batteries and retains the setting on power failure.

Installing floor heating mat

Installing Radiant Heating Floor Mat (homegardenblog)

We installed heated floor for our kitchen in winter of 2006.  It is called radiant heated floors.

The mats are placed between the kitchen counter where you spent most of the time cooking. Be careful not to damage or cut the heating wire. Inspite of our strict instruction contractor kept the bucket. On the bottom left corner is the multimeter to monitor the resistance (ohms) during the installations. SunTouchProgrammable Floor Stat Model: 500600-120R. It has day, night and vacation setting.

We used SunTouch electric heating mats. We had to use two 8'x30" mats. Temperatue is controlled by Suntouch Programmable Floor Stat (Model: 500600-120R)

You can distribute the mat by cutting.

CAUTION: Only cut the red plastic mesh. Do not cut the blue heating wire.